Elmhurst Under Seige: 'It Sounded Like a Big Train Coming By'

Elmhurst looks like a town under siege. Roads are blocked off from the north end of town to the south because of huge, downed trees. City crews are trying to free cars and homes from the grips of their branches.

The city is almost completely without power, and the din of generators, chainsaws and wood chipping machines floods the air.

Wanda Block considers herself fortunate that the enormous tree that fell in front of her home on the 700 block of South York Road last night did not hit her house. It did rip down a light post, though.

“Thank God it wasn’t on our house. It took that light pole right out,” she said.

Block was home when the big storm blasted through town.

“It sounded like a big train coming by,” she said. When the tree fell, she thought a semi truck had driven through her yard and hit part of her house.

“It was really wild,” she said.

Her neighbor, Pat Horwitz, tried to get a look at the rear of her 2006 Honda Accord. It was crushed under a large tree that fell across her driveway.

“I was just getting ready to retire,” she said of finishing up her career as a middle school teacher in Bloomingdale. “I was so happy that car was almost paid off.”

Just around the corner, on Oneida, Mike McGoldrick was beginning the process of cleaning up his yard. He tossed huge branches into the middle of the street, which had already been blocked off by police.

“The storm came through and snapped these things like kindling,” he said.

He was watching the Cubs vs Sox game on TV, when the broadcast was interrupted by a warning.

“I turned on the Weather Channel, and they were showing us on the radar,” he said. “They cut to the Weather Channel’s headquarters, and the two commentators there were saying, ‘We’ve got a situation in Chicago. Millions of people there, and here comes this gigantic storm with possibly 80 mile-an-hour winds.’

“About 15 minutes before it hit, the power went out.”

McGoldrick has a gas generator to keep his sump pump and refrigerator working. Which is fortunate, since ComEd is reporting the

Peter Rohrich, another Oneida resident, also has a generator. He was called away from his meeting at the American Legion Hall in Hillside last night by word of the storm.

A large tree branch had fallen and hit his house, breaking windows and damaging the gutters. His white, picket fence was missing a section. But nobody was hurt. That’s the main thing, he said.

“The stuff, we can repair,” he said.

The story was repeated block after block, in every corner of town. Police, public works crews, and city workers from the water and streets departments were gradually making the rounds.

Bill Schuster from Elmhurst Public Works said all of the department’s manpower was being deployed.

“We have six crews out, three to four people per crew,” he said. "That’s our department and parts of others—people from water and streets.“

Frank Schuh, Elmhurst Unit District 205 director of buildings and grounds, stopped by his mom’s house at the corner of York and Cayuga. Large tree branches dangled from the overhead power lines in front of her home.

He said 13 of the district’s 15 school buildings were without power. Only Churchville and Conrad Fischer were still OK. All summer activities for students were cancelled.

So, what was it that trashed our beloved burgh? A microburst? A tornado? Or was it simply sustained winds of 80 miles per hour?

“I traveled everywhere in town last night, and everything seems to be facing the same direction,” Schuh said. “It seems more like straight-line winds than a tornado.”

“I was in the basement when I heard it,” said his mom, Anna May Schuh. “I thought, ‘Do I have still a house up there?’ "

A little bit south on York Road, across from Visitation Parish, Caroline Elsey and her mom, Susan, were looking in awe at one of the city’s tallest evergreens laying on its side, completely uprooted. Power lines were poking from beneath it, all twisted up on the sidewalk.

More than a hundred power lines have been reported down throughout town.

“There is a tree on top of the roof a couple blocks down,” Caroline, 14, said. “There’s wires all over the street.”

One of their neighbors found a “big, yellow, inflatable, bouncy thing” in their yard.

“We know all the neighbors around here, and we don’t know anyone who owns this thing,” Susan said.

She was visiting friends in Elmhurst when the storm hit.

“It was pitch dark, then there was this red glow afterwards,” she said.

There is no more severe weather predicted for Elmhurst in the near future, but rain is expected. Hopefully that won’t slow the cleanup—or power restoration—any longer than necessary.

“This is really bad back in here,” Schuster said, pointing to the areas on South York Road and beyond. “We’ll be here all day, that’s all I know.”